February 22, 2012

make it yourself: lightweight bath mat

I have a thing about bath mats. I think they're gross. Even worse is trying to wash one of those things. When I put a regular bath mat in my teeney-tiny washer it bangs around in the basement like a self-contained earthquake. I tossed my mat months ago but in the meantime I've just been tossing a folded up towel on the floor. Not pretty but a whole lot easier to wash.

With this simple and fast diy I get to keep the easy laundry and turn up the pretty just a bit. I thrifted two vintage towels - about $1.99 each at an overpriced 'thrift' store.

Lay them flat and line up the centres. Make sure you have the right sides together (if you can tell which is which. There's a chance I could not so I just went with what I liked.)

Before I pinned the two towels together I decided to cut the edge off the smaller of the towels. It was a personal call and not totally necessary. It may make sewing a tiny bit easier.

Sew around the four edges leaving a 3 to 5 inch gap on one of the longer sides.

Trim around the edges.

Turn that baby inside out, press and top stitch around the edges. Lookie here, you've made yourself a bath mat!

If you want to make this thing non-slip you can add a few lines of silicone caulking to one side. I didn't do this because a) health care is free in Canada and b) I like having the option to reverse the mat.

Obviously this is not a rocket science kind of diy but it's the kind that put a smile on my face. Thrifty, vintage-y and less hard on my washing machine-y (I like continuity).